INTRODUCTION

My name is Emmanuel Hourquet, I'm an art director/3D generalist and game developer from France. Thanks to Unity and some assets (like playmaker) as a designer I can produce and publish my own games and virtual experiences.

This is the work in progress thread of my NEON submission, trying to design everything myself and using cheap assets. The main idea is to create a full street with details, characters and short story. This is a good way for me to use substance painter and source link / fbx & alembic import/export and of course timeline & cinemachine.

This challenge is also a good test for the pipeline I will use for my short SR17.

FINAL SUBMISSION / VIDEO

Synopsis

Earth, 2075. Famine and wars have consumed the planet.
A deadly virus, only conveyed by children, has decimated 1/3 of its inhabitants.
As a result, it was forbidden to give birth, punishable by death...These were replaced by hybrid babies. Their future parents could choose all the characteristics, if their bank account was big enough...

3 consortiums, share power and keep their stranglehold on humans, thanks to the hybrid children market and a secure city protected from the toxic and hungry land on earth.

But one day, a woman gives birth in secret to an healthy girl with no traces of the virus... A disaster for the consortiums. A renewed hope for the world... An ancient warrior society, called the Chimeras, will help protect this new-born and transform the future of the planet.

The present scene is taking place in the low part of one of the major city of the consortium, where one Chimera warrior is tring to find the pregnant women to help her. She will need to find her way in the small streets...

DEVELOPMENT LOG (from new to old)

WIP / UPDATE 12

This is where i have landed so far tonight, just one day remaining before the end of the timing... I will need to fix some small animations bugs then i will export my cameras to create the final video before the deadline.

WIP / UPDATE 11

So now all secondary characters are finished, dressed and textured. I made the decision to revisit completely the lighthing and mood of the scene , to get better fog and details and a more general realistic feel. Now i need to fix some small details and add complexity in some areas then work on timeline (alembic import of cloth/characters) and camera setup.

WIP / UPDATE 10

Finally got some time today to kitbash and add the upper Consortium city. I wanted something cold and with a sense of advance tech to contrast with the rest of the scene and everyday life of the people on the ground. Need to feel massive so this is the first block out. I still need to add cables, greeble and moving parts to add life to it.
Now going to spend the rest of the week doing clothing for the secondary characters in Marvelous Designer.

WIP / UPDATE 9

Because of the Christmas break, i was not able to work a lot of my scene but decide to add all the secondary characters & animations i will need later. Now i have a better overview of what i need to model and dress and if i need to re work on the animations timing. I have also started to model the upper (in the sky) consortium city for the rich people of this now over crowded and polluted planet

WIP / UPDATE 8

Quick update on my progress. Starting filling all the areas of the 3 streets with characters and details. Keep changing the lighting at this stage and trying some camera pov and moves

WIP / UPDATE 7

So i have finished to block 3 areas and added more details such lights, cables and props. Now i'm on a mission to add animations to the scene, fixing problems & textures, creating more camera moves and eye candy stuff. Next big thing on my list is character design & animation.

WIP / UPDATE 6

Added some more street lights and details and a second camera move. Now working on fixing darker portions of the street, populating a bigger area and adding ton of details.

WIP / UPDATE 5

So small progress the last couple of days on the general scene but added the following:

Robot, can be used in one shop and the restaurant. Modeled in Fusion360 + kitbash then cleaned & uv in Maya. Full hierarchy to pose.

Then i wanted to have a lot of hanging cables but cannot afford one of the asset store solution so after some learning, i have managed to build a procedural cable rig with Houdini then imported thanks to the Unity houdini engine. Not perfect but ok and modular enough for my purpose.

Now adding more characters, details, volumes and street lights to my scene...

WIP / UPDATE 4

So after lot of trials and errors, this is the first scene output as a video. I have issues with the Unity frame recorder so i have used FFMpeg exporter, workig like a charm but taxing on the cpu.

I have some problems with flicker but the whole mood is there except some too heavy lit lights.

WIP / UPDATE 3

Today, some hours on the details of the scene, adding more props and also more emissive lights. I will need more characters and more street lights later on.

WIP / UPDATE 2: Main Character "the chimera"

I have created from DAZ to Maya to Marvelous Designer a character and cloths and all was imported in Unity via alembic. Still need to tweak animations and shaders but it is a starting point for now.